Dungeons and Tentacles

Let's suppose that you were building a new D&D campaign setting from the ground up using HP Lovecraft as your primary influence. You've got Lords of Madness in hand, and you've got access not only to all of the Monster Manuals, but you also have the Creature Collections from Sword and Sorcery Studios, Tome of Horrors I and II, Book of Fiends, and the Monsternomicon. Let's assume that in order to make things seem horrific, you chose not to use most of the iconic monsters from D&D, possibly even sticking to just aberrations (though that is not a requirement). Let's also assume that the cosmology is to be recreated from the ground up. How would you go about it? What would the political landscape on such a world be like? Would the ancient gods be worshipped, or would they be hidden? What races would you include or not include? What would the heroes do in this setting?

First of all, you have to think about how overt you want the horrors to be. Does everyone know about what dwells behind those hills, or do most people pretend there is nothing extraordinary over there? Familiarity breeds contempt.

Secondly, I dispute the assumption that you can't use most monsters from the Monster Manual. The horror lies in the delivery. You should try to present every creature not as a "random monster", but as an alien life form. Communication even with sapient beings should be difficult and usually very disturbing. Even lowly orcs and goblins can become horrific if they can't be argued or reasoned with. Don't neccessarily present them as evil, but simply as inhuman competitors for the same ecological niche. They breed rapidly, and if you don't kill them all, they will eventually swarm over your communities and kill you. It's as simple as that.

Dragons and similarly powerful creatures become figures of elemental terror. Only the most learned savants attempt to understand their motives and speech, and the first thing those learn is that they don't think like humans. Only insane cultists even attempt to open a dialogue with them, and they are likely to misunderstand both those creatures and the nature of their relationship.

Jürgen Hubert said:

First of all, you have to think about how overt you want the horrors to be.

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Let's just say that everyone who responds to this thread may have a different answer to that.

Secondly, I dispute the assumption that you can't use most monsters from the Monster Manual.

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Once again, the statement was a guideline, not etched in stone. Feel free to use or discard any of the rough guidelines I posted above.

That sounds a lot like my game. i'll google my old posts to se what tips i can give

The Afterlife in my game focuses on "Heaven" for the good and "Hell" for the evil, while the very multiverse held together by Law. Chaos is used to prevent Law from crystallizing existence and is also tapped for magical power, which in turn was shaped into [relatively] safe to use Circles of spells [levels] By the power of Order.

At the death of the body, the spirit [ mortal consciousness ] of the body might be approached by entities offering some form of unlife [put your money on Orcus]. If the spirit refuses the choice or does not have it forced upon them [spawning undead] A death angel [Neutral angels similar to the entities from the movie version of “The Mothman Prophesies”] tries to get the soul out of the body and on its way ASAP to prevent soul consuming entities from doing what they do best. If the death was caused by Death magic then the victim can only choose undeath or oblivion. If the death was caused by a spawning undead then the soul can no longer be pulled from the body by the death angel and the soul will be consumed over the duration of the spawn delay [ Undeath willingly accepted is treated as a no-delay spawn]. If the body is sufficiently destroyed before the transition, the soul can then be sent on is way. If corporeal undead are destroyed after transition to undead, then the spirit fades to oblivion or, if strong enough, the spirit becomes an incorporeal undead creature.

Once sent on its way, the spirit enters The Soulstream [the flow of spirits from the mortal world traveling through the astral plane to their final destination]. The soul stream is guarded by a Host of death angels who keep most soul eating creatures at bay. It is advised that Astral tourists avoid the Soulstream if at all possible since death angels are permitted to send any mortal soul found on the astral plane to Judgment, even if it mean separating that soul from its mortal husk.

The speed and how directly one's soul travels through the 'Astral' plan to the target destination is determined on how the mortal behaved on the law-chaos axis. A very chaotic person may spiral incredibly far off the soul-stream. How far a chaotic soul flies from the Soulstream matters since on the outer fringes of the Astral plane lurks an entity, best described as Lovecraftian, that claims the most chaotic of spirits. It is strong enough to pull most chaotic spirits to it, but does not usually does not do this, reserving Its power to gnaw at the bonds of reality. The gods do not speak of what happens to those it takes, but the few mortals who claim to know are quite insane. This entity seems to have an actual dislike of the death angels and tries to attack them at any opportunity.

Once the Astral gauntlet is run, the soul lands at the place of Judgement. Good spirits go to ‘heaven’ and enjoy eternity while evil spirits go to ‘hell’ and suffer. Those dead-on Nuetral [quite rare] can have their souls go to the side where their chief deity is [if the god is offering the option], merge with the mortal world, be reincarnated [starting over, not the spell] or if lawful enough, be made into neutral angels.

Heaven is as one would expect it, except not being chopped up into separate planes. The souls can earn a more pleasant existence by helping out with the work load [become Good angel and serve…etc ]

Hell is a little different there are the 9 levels of the hells where the devils hold sway and punish mortals. Spiritually nearby there are at least 666 separate sub levels where demons, unbound by hell’s hierarchy, rule.

Whisperfoot said:

Let's just say that everyone who responds to this thread may have a different answer to that.

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Well, what do you want? A campaign where hapless explorers encounter Things Man Was Not Meant To Know in strange, far-off places? Or a grim struggle against impossible odds in a post.End Times fantasy world?

Both can be fun, but both provide different feels.

foundation of the world
Creator type deity was betrayed by lesser deities and minions wanting more power than the cabals of mortal worshippers offered them.

The lesser gods stole as much power as they could, dividing up among thier number the creator's goodness, mercy, wrath, maliciousness, etc. This left the creator entity in a state mortals might liken to insanity. It tried to bring about The End, but the lesser deities stopped enough so that a few souls could be preserved from The End and the worlds could be remade.

The lesser deities bound a 'small' portion [star sized] at the center of prime material to keep the multiverse intact, and then reshaped & reworked the cosmos to suit themselves.

The remaining infinity was forced outside the multiverse along with the minions that stayed loyal* to the creator [*except for the angel of death, who would still be needed]. This remaining infinity's power is bleeding into the world. This Power, that can break the rules the deities reshaped the world with, is what mortals think of as magic.

Whisperfoot said:

Let's assume that in order to make things seem horrific, you chose not to use most of the iconic monsters from D&D, possibly even sticking to just aberrations (though that is not a requirement).

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If you do that, then rangers just got a lot better, because the "favored enemy: aberrations" will come up in almost every encounter. Good for the Van Helsings of your world.

Particle_Man said:

If you do that, then rangers just got a lot better, because the "favored enemy: aberrations" will come up in almost every encounter. Good for the Van Helsings of your world.

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Right, but he could always just have the rangers pick specific aberrations or divide them into subcategories. Personally, I'd also use undead (mostly the squishier kind — zombies, ghouls, anything that's a rotting or semi-rotting corpse of any kind), but that's me.

Whisperfoot said:

Let's suppose that you were building a new D&D campaign setting from the ground up using HP Lovecraft as your primary influence. You've got Lords of Madness in hand, and you've got access not only to all of the Monster Manuals, but you also have the Creature Collections from Sword and Sorcery Studios, Tome of Horrors I and II, Book of Fiends, and the Monsternomicon. Let's assume that in order to make things seem horrific, you chose not to use most of the iconic monsters from D&D, possibly even sticking to just aberrations (though that is not a requirement). Let's also assume that the cosmology is to be recreated from the ground up. How would you go about it? What would the political landscape on such a world be like? Would the ancient gods be worshipped, or would they be hidden? What races would you include or not include? What would the heroes do in this setting?

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Interesting. I think the political landscape would largely reflect the religion — if the elder gods are worshipped, then I think you've got a situation where you could have tyrants worshipping the elder gods, oppressed kingdoms, peasants and lords living in perpetual fear of each other because of class issues (fear of the cultists above, fear of revolution from below, unstable alliances). If not, then you could run a much more standard setting, but with hidden cultists pulling the strings of some major rulers. As for races, I'd go straight humans and maybe use a goblinoid of some kind (orcs?). For some reason, I'm thinking of the landscape from Browning's "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" — just a blasted hellish landscape, dotted with castles and towers, dying animals, really twisted stuff. I don't know, just some thoughts.

Nick

Building a DnD Campaign from the Ground Up using Lovecraft as the primary influence:
It can't be DnD. At least not as we think of it.

First issue: Magic and magic using classes. Grim Tales would be a far better starting place than the PHB for magic, and for all the classes in general, in such a world. Or If you want to use the PHB classes eliminate any of them that use magic. Replace the magic using classes with a beefed up Expert (say one that gets feats every other level) and employ a skill and feats based magic system (EOM:Mythic Earth) and employ a system of Sanity or Taint. Grant a small body of neutral untility magics that wouldn't be too dangerous, but anything that caused damage or altered the self or others in a significant way would have a heavy penalty.

Second issue: Gods. The Lovecraftian gods don't want your worship any more than you want the worship of ants. There are a few possibly exceptions to that, and they may be responcible for what passes as a DnD pantheon, all of why would just be masks for a single unknowable entity who is manipulating humanity for its own ends. Certainly none of these beings are going to go around giving humans powers.

Third Issue: Tone. A Lovecraft game isn't heroic. Humanity is doomed, and PCs are doomed a little more quickly than others.


Having said all of that, however, I am all in favor of using Lovecraft as ONE influence among many. In such a case I would have the normal DnD universe invaded, or infected, by a lovecraftian God of Aberrations. This God awoke due to the actions of some insane cultist,the PCs tried to stop them but they only stopped one group not all of them, and began corrupting or replacing vast portions of the world with a twisted version of reality ruled by Mindflayers and their thralls. Arcane magic has become tainted and is dangerous, a single fireball may spell the end of a Wizard's soul; and the normal pantheon of gods has been weakened by the incursion and don't have much energy to spend on their servants. Paladins loose spell casting and get an unsummonable 3.0 warhorse, all other half divine casters are now powerless, Clerics and Druids have to make rolls to see if they have gotten the gods attention and that their god has power to spare. As the campaign progresses these rolls should get harder, not easier. Throw in Chaositech from Malhavok to replace magic items, which are getting weaker day by day as magic is twisted by the Aberrant God. Give a sense of futility - BUT let the PCs think that there is way to save the world, however slim a chance there might be. Otherwise you are playing Dark Ages Cthulhu and not DnD.

Funny, this is markedly similar to what I'm trying to do with my new homebrew. I'm nixing traditional Outsiders(angels, devlis, demons etc, though I may keep the death slaadi) and have aberrations take their place. Most aberrations simply can't interact with humanity in any meaningful way, so they're typically summoned and bound to perform simple tasks. The few aberrations that CAN interact with humanity, like the illithids, are not good news.

Since my players are quite jaded and very knowledgeable about the MM monsters, I've decided to revamp the aberrations(and some magical beasts -- Roper, I'm looking at you). as Outsiders, completely changing their abilities. I think most will probably have some kind of aura of insanity, combined with the abilitiy to slip through space in odd ways(dimension door as a move action that causes nearby humans to become shaken).

I'm only going to have one church, the Order of the Cerulean Flame. They'll worship the Flame as a sort of progenitor and protector of humanity, and by calling upon the Flame, it's possible to turn or banish these outsider aberrations. The catch(there's always a catch) is that the Flame itself isn't so much an anti-aberration force, as it is the Really Big Nasty Aberration that keeps all the rest under control. So, there are probably mind flayers and dolgaunts, among other things, hiding in the upper echelons of the priesthood. Your standard D&D pantheon will be nonexistant, though I may have some animal-worshipping druidic sects running around somewhere.